Ice's Fireside Reviews/Full Reviews
Breath of the Wild Dislaimer: This review is a tad dated, hence the odd structuring. Hello, this is Ice, with a review on Breath of the Wild. There are many things that I have shared about this game that I dislike, however there are definitley things that I liked about this game, so I'm just going to lay it all out. Tutorial So let's start from the beginning. The Great Plateau. The Great Plateau is easily my favorite tutorial of any Zelda game. Whenever I go back to play my favorite Zelda games I always dread having to face the tutorial, however with this game, I would do the great plateau with no problems at all, since it's a great, mysterious place that really gets you excited for the full game. It explains all of the games mechanics excellently, and the other tutorials don't really feel like that. They moreso just feel like unnecessary tasks that you do before you play the actual game, and those tasks often aren't very engaging. This one though it always keeps you excited for whatever you're going to do next in the tutorial, always wanting to do the next shrine, while at the same time, curiosity peaks from the world that you explore in between each shrine. I remember specifically from my first playthrough a year ago how difficult it was to access the Cryonis shrine, and how much trial and error it took, until you sort of realize what you have to do. It also is very impressive, as it shows you how much more open, and how many more possibilities there are in this open world, as compared to the linearity in the previous titles. There is nothing to give but praise to the tutorial, in my opinion, and this same approach should be used in future installments. After an hour and a half ish, you'll probably find the tutorial wrapping up as you have completed all of the shrines. The old man, whom is one of my favorite characters in this game, asks you then to meet him where the 4 shrines intersect, which would be the Temple of Time. Really quick I'm going to go on a little rant about the Temple of Time as I was very dissapointed to find out it was never given a big role in this game, which is entirely different from previous installments. I would've loved to have seen it's importance highlighted more in this game, but it's fine that it wasn't. I should've mentioned that this plateau is also old hyrule, as indicated by the broken structures matching up with that of OoT, which I think is cool that it almost serves as a metaphor, that they are trying to move past those old conventions, though maybe that's just how I saw it. So anyways, when you reach the Temple of Time, the first thing you'll probably notice is the Goddess Statue, which is glowing. If you pray to her, with all spirit orbs you have acquired, she will give you the option on increasing your stamina, or your amount of hearts. I personally enjoy this take a lot more than defeating dungeons, as it sort of requires more effort to receive those hearts, and it gives opportunity for you to earn more. I think it balances things a bit more, especially when considering there are only 4 dungeons total in this game. Anyways, then the old man will tell you everything that happens and gives you the paraglider. The paraglider. Dear god, this is the greatest feature added to the game. The paraglider is such an awesome way to navigate in this HUGE vast world. It's just fun to do in general, and I seriously don't know why it is. The paraglider should be added in every upcoming zelda installment, as it is just way too much fun. The tutorial gets a 10/10 Shrines Shrines are sort of a mixed bag for me. I like the idea of them, however they're only fun for like the first 50, in my opinion. After that they become repetitive and tedious, and very few stand out. Though I do enjoy how these are what are being used to get hearts and stamina, I just think that maybe in future games they should differentiate the shrines a tad bit more, theme them a bit differently. I'm going to give the shrines a 5/10 Story and Boss Oh boy the story in this game. Now it's very interesting, and I really do like the concept of how they present the story. They make it as like a sort of side quest, where you can go out and seek the story if you want, or you could not if you're more into gameplay. That idea is awesome, as it pulls in more players, and I think they should keep on doing that. When you get the memories, they're fun to receive, and it's a nice little challenge to try and find the rest, as you are motivated to do so from getting more and more. However, this storyline is pretty weak. The main villain really isn't motivated by anything, and Calamity Ganon is definitley the weakest of any Ganon, as he doesn't really provide any personality or reason to beat him within the storyline other than you know that he'll supposedly destroy everything. And his design looks the least like Ganon from any of the others, which is sort of weird that they're taking away that familiarity. It never once felt like I was fighting Ganon, I just felt like I was fighting this weird pink gooey thing. Something that would've saved this game's storyline would've been a character that you hate, so that it gives you an actual reason to kill him. A Calamity Ganondorf would've been awesome! ''I would've loved to have seen a human version of this monster. And again, when I say he doesn't look like Ganon, it doesn't mean I hate his design, because I really do love his design, though it just doesn't feel like Ganon without any personality. When you get at the end of the game, there's still no real set explanation for Calamity Ganon, or for his transformations, and the final boss just feels like it was ultimately for nothing as it's importance isn't really highlighted after you beat it. It's just sort of... there? Now besides the lack of a villain, this story is really just not that interesting. It's about Zelda going from fountain to fountain trying to re-awaken her power, and then her dad being mad at her for not being able to. It seems ultimately insignificant, because by the time she can use her power... well everyones pretty much dead. On top of that, I can't really understand why the Divine Beasts didn't work in the past, however once you actually re-awaken them, it suddenly works??? I don't know, a lot of it just seems like it was for nothing. Though I will say, I do like all of the voice actors, they all did a great job as their roles. I also will say that I really liked that scene where Zelda is crying, it literally gave me goosebumps, since it was one of the first human moments it felt like. I also enjoyed all of the cutscenes where you meet the champions for your first time, and meeting those who took their place was cool. Overall the story lacked, so I'm giving it a 3/10 Dungeons The dungeons in this game are also sort of a mixed bag for me, but overall, they were fantastic. They provided a challenge, and they were pretty fun to do. I mean some of them may have lacked a little bit in originality, however for the most part they were all unique and super fun to do. The first divine beast I did was the Elephant one, which i don't remember it's name. It was really fun to complete, and I really dig the idea of the elephant trunk, as it provided unique puzzles, and this statement goes with a lot of dungeons, but man they did an excellent job at keeping them unique, at least in terms of puzzles. However their design differed very little, and I really disliked that they all shared a very similar look, making it hard to distinguish them. I mean obviously all of them are different animals, but the overall design choice in terms of the lights, walls and everything looks the same between the shrines, with little distinction. I'm also not a huge fan of the bosses. They all did different things, which was... cool I suppose, but they all looked the same, which was boring. I like having bosses look DISTINCTLY DIFFERENT, rather than this new approach to bosses, which I hope they don't keep. I like the idea, though they need to make them more interesting. With that, I'm giving dungeons a 6/10 Overworld Now let's get to the overworld. The overworld has some highs and lows. I like the parts where it's nice and peaceful, and I enjoy being able to discover new places within the overworld. I particularly liked Hateno Village, Gerudo Town, Goron City, Rito Village, Kakariko, and Lurelin Village, their designs were awesome, and they were all very different. Though I think some of these towns felt a little small at times, and maybe the actual size needs to increase, or they should make more unique characters in said towns, since that's what previous installments did, which I think made them more memorable. Also, I really loved how Lurelin looked and felt, but it broke my heart that there's no real reason to go there, really. The buildings are cool looking, but I wouldn't go there just for that. They should definitley add more unique and defining characteristics to towns to make you want to go to them. There could've been a whole shop dedicated to fishing for example, or, I don't know something else, it just needs something to make you want to go there, and to make it more memorable. A lot of the other places sort of need that purpose to. The only reason why you would go to other towns would be probably for different clothing, which is the case for Goron City, Zora Domain, and... several others. They need distinctions, like all the previous installments had. This is why Hateno Village is my favorite village in the entire game. It's big, which is something I like, it has a few unique characters, which is awesome and is also something I liked, and it also has a distinction, being it is the home of the only place where you can dye your clothes in all of hyrule. It is the ideal town for a zelda game, and they should've made more like this. Also, this reminds me of one of the other greatest features of this game, which lies within Hateno: YOU CAN BUY A HOUSE. This is an awesome feature. With enough money and effort you can restore a house, and buy it. Once bought you can use it as a place to put your belongings, and I wish it's importance was highlighted, because that would be the only thing that would've made it better. It's the best side quest in the game, alongside Tarrey Town, with that one dude who was helping you restore the house, who was a cool unique character. Anyways, back on topic. Hateno is an awesome village, and if there were more things like this, it would've made the world feel less dense, and made the game more fun. Also, where the hell is Castle Town? This is the part of the game that particularly infuriated me, that there is no castle town, which is a big part that is to be expected in any zelda game, which isn't seen. It would've been awesome if there was one similarly to Twilight Princess, but it's sadly missing. Besides this, the sidequests were pretty good in this game overall, I particularly liked the house one, tarrey one, and the cake one. They were fun to do, even if I didn't do that many. Now let's talk about some of the collectibles throughout the world. I talked about the shrines, so you know how I feel about those, but let's talk about some of the other collectibles. Really the only ones that there are is the Korok seed. I can't think of any collectibles you are seeking out in the game, which is sort of lame because usually there are a ton of collectibles, for different things, but in this game there's really not that many. And even then the koroks are such a boring thing to collect, for something that everyone wants, being inventory space. It's not terribly fun trying to find these as you don't need to do anything that crazy to find them, it's just a little thing to do, and your motiviation and patience will most likely quickly die when finding them. And keep in mind there are 900 of these things. That's insane. Also something real quick to point out is there is a severe lack of enemies, which pains me, as I could've loved to seen more. It would've made the world a whole lot better. I think previous installments have had twice as much as BOTW has, which is genuinely dissapointing. On the topic of things to do in the world, there is a lot you could do like raid monster bases, which can be pretty fun sometimes, or just mess around with the runes to do stuff, which can also be fun, or going to stables, meeting travellers, fighting bosses, which are all big highlights of this overworld. One in particular I really enjoyed was the character Kilton, who is probably my favorite character in the whole game in terms of design, and I liked the shop idea. And while I used to complain about the overworld, really the only problem it has is the towns. It's really fun discovering some places throughout the world, it's particularly fun finding things from past games, like the goddess statue, which I thought was awesome to be included in the game. Really great overworld in general. I'm going to give it a 7/10 Conclusion My overall final review on it would be a 6.6/10. I enjoyed parts, but man those flaws are painful, and I really hope they fix them in future installments. Minecraft Ah! Hello friends, and welcome to a Fireside review of Minecraft. I'm Ice, your host, as always and I've praised this game several times over the years though I've never given my full two cents on what I love about this game. This review will be talking about the PC version of Minecraft. Gameplay Now I will be dividing the gameplay up into several different sections, because if I didn't this review would be far too unstructured. But let's talk about what Minecraft is. Minecraft is a sandbox game, in which you can either do Creative mode, a mode where you can build whatever you want, Survival mode, where you must survive (basically), and Adventure mode, which is used by map makers, and is used if you play maps, pretty much. One thing I forgot to mention, is that this all takes place in a blocky world. This makes it much easier to build and such, as compared to most other sandboxes. All of these modes serve good functions which make the game work great. 'UNDER CONSTRUCTION.''' 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